Abstract
Presents a review of research on religiosity in Sweden from the 1880s until today. This review shows that the neglect of the religious mainstream is a two-step process in Sweden with time-specific beginnings 1880s and 1980s but no ends. It is therefore concluded that the tendency to neglect the religious mainstream continues with the implication that the majority of swedes are conceptualized as overly non-religious and indifferent to the religious. The chapter also describe an interim period of research when focus was placed on Swedish citizens with a loose commitment to the Church of Sweden. This research showed that the loose commitment was a source of national identity.
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Notes
- 1.
In Swedish: Statistiska studier rörande svenska kyrkan.
- 2.
Stockholm was not a recognized diocese in an ecclesial sense in the 1890s but still counted as a distinct area in Rundgren’s statistics.
- 3.
When Berndt Gustafsson died in 1975 the chair in Sociology of Religion just appointed to him was appointed to Göran Gustafsson (1936–2018). Because the two professor have the same surname, I will, when necessary for clarity, refer to them by first name and surname.
- 4.
In Swedish the title read: Bakom dubbla lås: En studie av små och långsamma värderingsförändringar (Pettersson 1988).
- 5.
- 6.
Lakatos (2015) provides statistical evidence for the claim that the traditional value-dimension blurs the possibility of liberal religion.
- 7.
Inglehart and Baker (2000) and Pettersson (1988) makes, for example a point of the Scandinavian countries sharing values because of their shared Protestant-Lutheran Cultural history and this can be seen as a way of accounting for the expectations’ of churches. The influence of these churches are thus downplayed at the expense of materialistic explanations stressing welfare as an explanation for value change. In a similar manner, sociological studies of the Church of Sweden prior to the year of 2000 can be viewed as a study of a part of the Swedish state as the Church of Sweden up to this point was a state church.
- 8.
One possibility is to suggest that the heirs are found in the extensive research on the churches as providers of welfare (Bäckström and Davie 2010, 2011, 2012) or the research describing Swedes relation to the Church of Sweden as ‘believing in belonging’ (Davie 2000; Storm 2009). This research share the spirit of Gustafsson’s goal to understand religion (and particularly the churches) role in society and thus his neglect to view the ‘ceremonial religion’ as a response to expectations of both religious and secular authorities. Another possibility could be to view the Nordic comparative studies (Gustafsson 1985, 1987; Furseth 2018) continuation of Gustafsson’s analyses. This research foremost focus on expressions of religion in the public sphere and thus fall outside the scope of ‘ceremonial religion’ in the context discussed here.
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Willander, E. (2020). When the Mainstream Was Lost. In: Unity, Division and the Religious Mainstream in Sweden. Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52478-4_3
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